


patiently heal you, patiently unreel you

by atlantisairlock



Category: Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brother-Sister Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, Growing Up, Growing Up Together, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Character Death, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Pre-Canon, Romantic Soulmates, Running Away, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 23:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16438868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlantisairlock/pseuds/atlantisairlock
Summary: Lou finds out about soulmates when she’s four and the alphabet starts appearing on her left arm in bright blue marker.AU where everything your soulmate writes on their skin appears on your own.





	patiently heal you, patiently unreel you

**Author's Note:**

> me, reading a soulmate au fanfic on the way to school on thursday: oh, this idea's cool, i think it would work with debbie & lou. let me whip up something quick  
> me today, finally finishing the damn thing: jesus FUCKING christ what even happened here 
> 
> title from lofticries by purity ring.

Lou finds out about soulmates when she’s four and the alphabet starts appearing on her left arm in bright blue marker. She watches in bewildered fascination as letter after letter forms on her skin, big and a little shaky, from A all the way until Z. When it reaches Z she runs to her father and asks him what it means, because she hasn’t learned to be afraid yet, to be wary, to run and hide from angry words and the sting of the belt. It’s already beginning, though, because when he sets eyes on the writing he clenches his jaw and his voice is hard. “That’s supposed to be your soulmate.”

“Soulmate,” Lou repeats, rolling the word over her tongue, letting it fill her with something like awe. “What’s a soulmate, Dad?”

“Your soulmate’s the person you’re meant to be with forever. Your other half. Your perfect match. Everything they write on their skin, you’ll see on your own. They’ll see what you write on yours too.” Even to Lou’s young self these words sound _beautiful_ but her father sounds so angry and resentful when he says them and it makes her frown. “It’s a crock of shit. You shouldn’t write back if you know what’s good for you. You’ll just end up fucking up your own life just to simper over some idiot on the other side of the world. You focus on school and work and actually accomplishing something with your life, do you understand me?”

She’ll find out, later, that her father has never seen any writing on his skin but his own. That he married someone who’d lived that same way all her life - arms and legs clean of writing, always. That they were happy, mostly, laughing in the face of this ‘soulmate bullshit’ society was pushing upon everyone, and then two years after Lou was born, writing finally started appearing on her skin.

For the rest of her life, Lou never sees her mother. Ostensibly she’s off somewhere in the far reaches of the world with the true love of her life, content and happy and finally normal. Just like everyone else, with her soulmate, proudly showing off the words on her skin. And Lou’s still here in a small, cramped flat in Melbourne with her father and one soulmate of her own in god-knows-where, still wide-eyed and curious and not knowing yet where her life is going to take her.

“Don’t you write back,” her father warns again, and leaves her sitting on the floor of the living room while he goes to get another bottle of vodka and disappears into his bedroom. Lou waits quietly until she’s sure he’s not coming back, then goes back into her own room, shuts the door, and picks up a marker.

 _Hi,_ she writes on her palm, small and secret, and that’s where it begins.

 

 

They start simple, she and her soulmate. Saying hi, exchanging names, sharing about important things like their favourite colour and animal and food and video game and everything in that same vein. Her soulmate’s name is _Debbie_ and her handwriting is big and loopy and slightly messy, and she has a penchant for drawing smiley faces and doodling random things everywhere. Lou wakes up to a smiley face on the back of her hand almost every morning and it never fails to make her smile too.

She only ever writes back in certain places throughout the rest of her childhood - her palm, her thigh, sometimes her stomach. Places her father never sees, so he can’t hit her when he realises what she’s doing. Debbie writes wherever she wants, seems to enjoy filling every inch of skin with ink, and every day Lou walks around with a multitude of colours all over her. It makes her happy and warm but then her father’s eyes will narrow at the breakfast table and he’ll clench his fist tighter around his fork and it starts making something drop in her chest.

Lou’s nine when he finally snaps for the first time, after she walks sleepily out of her room one morning to scribbling all over her right arm. Debbie seems to have gotten bored and entertained herself by taking a full box of markers and drawing random doodles on herself. In the midst of the doodles there is a _HI LOU_ in all caps, loud and bright. It’s the one piece of proof that tells her father she’s written back, at least once, and before she knows it his palm is flying across her face and making her stumble back, clutching her cheek. He screams at her about her disobedience and her stupidity and what does she _think_ she’s doing writing to some stranger who she doesn’t know the least about, hasn’t he told her, hasn’t he _warned_ her? 

She huddles under her sheets later, when he’s done with her, cradling her burning face. Lou’s shaking when she reaches for her usual marker, scrawling quickly on her palm. _Please stop drawing all over yourself,_ she writes, even though every word makes her want to choke and cry. She loves seeing Debbie’s doodles and she doesn’t want to stop seeing them, but she doesn’t want to be slapped again, to be yelled at for fifteen minutes in the kitchen, she _doesn’t._

Debbie replies a minute later, a small sad face appearing on Lou’s wrist, followed by writing on the back of her hand. _I thought you liked my drawings._

Lou’s eyes fill with tears, and she angrily blinks them away - she _won’t_ cry, she won’t. For a moment she considers lying to Debbie, because she doesn’t want her to know her father hits her, her father hates the idea of _soulmates_ and she’s not strong enough to stand up for herself. Debbie’s strong and brave - she’s spent nights under her blanket with her flashlight watching Debbie scribble long lines about adventures with her brother and standing up to bullies in the school playground, and Lou wishes she could be just like that.

Debbie’s sentence disappears slowly, replaced by a question. _Are you ok? What’s wrong? You can tell me anything. We’re soulmates remember?_

It’s followed by another small smiley face, so overwhelmingly familiar. Lou feels a sob shake its way out of her, at how kind and perceptive Debbie is, and she decides to tell the truth. _My dad hates the idea of soulmates,_ she writes, shaky. _He hit me because of what you drew today._

She waits for the response, pressure building in her chest, biting her lip and trying not to start crying when the seconds tick by and there’s no reply. Five minutes go by and she’s just about to give up and burrow under the sheets and go to sleep when the reply comes back. The lines are jagged and the letters are huge and Lou can _feel_ the anger radiating from them. _FUCK HIM,_ they say, and it’s the first time Debbie’s ever sworn in their conversations, and it’s enough to make Lou hiccup a surprised laugh.

 _I’ll get my brother to beat him up,_ Debbie writes, under the huge _FUCK HIM. I’ll get my mom and dad to DESTROY him and send him to jail and then you can come to live with us and we’ll go to school together and he’ll NEVER hit you again._

The tears are still in her eyes but Lou is smiling now. Debbie sounds so earnest and sincere and it makes her feel so loved. She might be alone here in Melbourne, living in fear of her father and making no friends in school, but her soulmate is here on her arm and keeping her company, always, and Lou wants nothing more than to go to her, wherever she is, and fall into a hug and leave all of this behind.

She watches the text disappear, then more writing reappear, smaller now, neater. _Lou? Where are you? I’ll bring my mom and dad and brother, I promise._

Lou bites her lip, hoping against hope. _Melbourne,_ she writes. _You?_

Another long silence. Finally, slow, small writing, and it feels sad and angry and defeated. _That’s so far,_ and Lou feels her heart stop. _I live in New York._

New York, Lou thinks, and it fills her with something like despair. New York is in America, on the other side of the world. There’s no way Debbie can come for her, not now.

 _Lou, I’m sorry,_ Debbie writes. _Stay strong ok? I’ll come to save you as soon as I can I PROMISE._

And that’s enough for her, at least for now. Lou feels loved and doesn’t feel alone and she will hold on until she can finally meet Debbie. She’ll have to hide her writing from her father and try not to make him mad and keep her head down but it’s okay. She can do that. She can be as brave as Debbie, and she won’t be on her own. One day they’ll find each other, and everything will be okay.

 

 

Debbie starts drawing less on herself after the night Lou comes clean to her. When she does, she keeps her scribbling to the same places Lou does - palms, thighs, stomach, her arms only when she knows Lou’s wearing long-sleeved shirts. Lou still wakes up to smiley faces every day, and they still make her smile.

She grows older and starts waking up to other things too. Less doodles, more text - still loopy cursive but neater now. Debbie holds conversations with Lou via writing on her palm but she also writes other things. A lot of it comes in a certain format. Lou’ll read the same thing off her thigh all the time - a time, a date, a location, sometimes complete with coordinates, and a rating. Debbie never comes right out and says it, but Lou’s not an idiot. They’re details for whatever job Debbie is pulling with her parents, or with Danny, or sometimes on her own. She’s not sure why Debbie writes them down and she never asks, but she spends the day worrying until Debbie writes her a conversation starter or a reply every night. 

Lou’s known that Debbie’s family is involved in crime since she was a kid - Debbie was never shy about revealing it or talking about it. When Lou was eleven, Debbie even declared that Lou could join her on jobs when they finally met each other. It wasn’t until Lou turned thirteen that the dates and times and locations started appearing, though, and it makes concern twinge in her chest. Jobs are dangerous. She doesn’t need to be actually doing crime to know that, and Debbie’s talked to her before about times when Danny went out and came back bleeding or bruised. Debbie is the one thing keeping her hope alive, especially on the bad days when her dad comes back drunk off his ass and spends solid hours hurling verbal abuse at her. When she’s locked herself in her bedroom icing her newest bruises she’ll look at whatever Debbie’s written on her skin that day and hold on to that knowledge that all the way in New York, there’s a girl who loves her, a girl who’s meant to be with her forever. A girl she’ll one day meet. 

If anything happens to Debbie before that happens -

Lou has no idea how to complete that sentence. She doesn’t want to think about it. 

 

 

When she’s fourteen she reads a news article about a boy who runs away from home. She pauses halfway in, goes back to the beginning and starts again, pondering every single word, every single sentence, going through it in her head, again and again.

 _Debbie,_ she thinks. New York. Running away. A plane flight. Getting out of the hellhole that is her home, and being with her soulmate. Years ago, Debbie declared she would come to save Lou and take her away and give her a room under their roof. Lou thinks she can find a way to save herself, now - get out and fly to New York and find her way to Debbie.

It will take time. She has to find the money, book her ticket, figure out how to get her plan in place and run away without her father finding out. But she can do this. She will.

 

 

She tells Debbie, first - of course she does. _I’m going to fly to New York._

Debbie’s response comes quickly, a bunch of exclamation marks. Lou laughs fondly as some question marks appear too. _When???_

 _I don’t know yet,_ Lou admits. _I’m figuring out how to do it. I need to save enough for a plane ticket and figure out how to get away without my dad realising what I’m doing._

 _I’ll wire you some money, let me know how,_ Debbie replies promptly. _I can buy you the ticket. You can come now, and I’ll pick you up from the airport, just let me know._

Something swells in Lou’s chest - she’ll never get tired of Debbie’s fervent sincerity, her encompassing generosity, the evident love she feels for her soulmate even though they’ve never met. Suddenly she feels deep, terrible sympathy for her father, because she can’t even _imagine_ a life without Debbie, without smiley faces every morning and the knowledge that she’s always got somebody a scrawl away. She loves Debbie more than her own life, and there is nothing more she wants than to get on that plane tomorrow and be with Debbie twenty hours later.

But she’s also proud, and independent, and she still wants to be _like_ Debbie, not just be with her. She wants to be the kind of person who strikes out and plans jobs and executes them without a hitch. She wants to do this on her own, even if it means sticking it out a little longer. She’s not alone, and she has something waiting for her at the end of the journey, and that’s enough.

So she puts the pen to her thigh again. _It’s okay. Don’t do that. I can save up on my own. I want to do this, Debbie. All my own effort. Just like you._

 _You don’t have to,_ Debbie starts, then pauses, because she loves Lou and respects her and understands why she’s saying what she’s saying. The text disappears from her arm. _Okay. I’ll be waiting. Just let me know. I’m here if you need me. Always._

 _I know,_ Lou writes, and that has always been enough.

 

 

It takes her two years, because she has no way of earning a real income. Her dad withholds her pocket money more often than he gives it to her and the only jobs she can swing are part-time minimum-wage jobs at fast-food and retail places. She hasn’t been raised in crime the way Debbie is, so she can’t even steal - she doesn’t want to risk it and have a mark on her record and have to explain herself to her father. She tries, once or twice, when the risk seems low, and she does succeed, but she doesn’t get more than twenty dollars at a go. The cheapest flights she can find are still nine hundred dollars and she still needs to get some contingency money to pay for food and clothes and other miscellaneous expenses she might face on the way.

She doesn’t tell Debbie even when it gets hard. They talk about everything else - Debbie recounts stories of her jobs and of funny things that happen in school and Lou stays under the covers smiling at every word that appears on her skin. She can’t wait to hear Debbie’s voice and see her face and hold her in her arms. Her _soulmate._ It’s been keeping her going for years, and she’s not about to give up now.

Her savings build up and up, hidden deep in her closet away from her father’s drunken, prying eyes. As her cash count reaches a thousand five hundred she starts keeping a closer eye on empty seats and flight times. She makes the booking and finalises it in the school library. She steals her passport from her father’s bedroom and gets what she needs packed in a sturdy rucksack. 

Two weeks after her sixteenth birthday, she’s ready. The night before the flight she writes with trembling hands on her wrist - her flight code and the departure time, and two simple words. _I’m coming._

Two minutes pass, and then - _write me when you arrive. I’m doing a job with Danny tomorrow, but I’ll pick you up._

Lou smiles, feeling something settle. She gets ready to turn in, needing to be up early to sneak out of the house and get to the airport, when one more thing appears on her hand. _Love you, Lou. I’ll see you soon._

Her eyes water. _Love you._ She’s felt that way for years, but they’ve never actually said the words, and she doesn’t think she’s ever felt like this - blinding, blooming happiness filling her to the brim. _Love you too,_ she writes back, and god, she does, so much, more than anything in the world.

 

The morning journey to the airport goes smoothly enough, and nobody bats an eye when she checks in. Lou waits in the departure lounge, chewing on a granola bar. Her mobile rings ten minutes before boarding and her heart skips a beat when she sees the caller ID - her father. She doesn’t pick up, and the call cuts after ten rings. He calls again, after, and then again, and again, and finally Lou just turns her phone off, breathing hard.

She just has to get out. Once she’s in New York, he can never touch her again. No more beatings, no more drunken ranting, no more tiptoeing into the kitchen to find food at midnight, no more.

When the boarding call comes she’s the first one in the queue. She reaches for the marker in her pocket and writes, small and neat, on her wrist. _Boarding._

Debbie doesn’t reply, but then she’s probably already on the job with Danny. Lou gets her ticket scanned and makes her way to her seat. She’ll get a response later. She can wait.

 

 

Ten hours into the flight, there’s still radio silence from Debbie. Lou squirms in her seat, sips on some water and tries to quell the panic rising in her throat. Debbie’s never been quiet for so long, has never ignored Lou when Lou needed her. Where is she now? The job can’t possibly have lasted so long, right?

Right?

She kicks herself for not asking for more details about the heist. If it was dangerous. If it was going to take a long time. Lou thinks about Debbie being injured and almost has a panic attack in mid-air. She goes for her marker again, writing small on her arm. _Debbie, you there?_

Another ten hours, and they’re circling into JFK, and still - nothing.

Nothing at all.

 

 

Lou roams the airport for a good four hours, struggling to stay calm and not burst out crying at the lack of ink on her skin. She’s been writing again and again, but there’s been no response, and she spends fifteen minutes in the airport bathroom scrubbing her own writing off her arms. She doesn’t know what to do. She has no idea where Debbie lives beyond _New York,_ and she has no idea where she should go.

For all the shit she’s dealt with at home, she’s _always_ had a place to go back to. There were days she’d stay out until two in the morning and sneak in in the middle of the night to avoid having to deal with her dad, but she’d always go home. She’s never spent a night on the streets, and the thought of doing that on her first day in a foreign country makes her nauseous, terror sinking deep into her bones.

Night has fallen by the time she summons up the courage to step out of JFK. She finds a twenty-four-hour MacDonalds and orders a cheap meal, sits in a corner and stays there until she’s barely able to stay on her feet from exhaustion.

She has enough money for a cheap motel room, so she hands over some money and gets a cramped, musty room for the night. She’s down to a little under three hundred USD, and that should be fine for a few more days - she thinks. Maybe Debbie will write her within the next few days and everything will be fine.

If not -

she’s fucked. There’s no other way to put it. She’s fucked.

Lou lies on top of the sheets and stares up at the ceiling, biting her lip and trying to breathe. Right before she goes to bed, she writes on her arm again, telling Debbie she’s _here_ and please, please reply.

Her sleep is anything but sweet.

 

 

There is no smiley face that greets her the next morning when she wakes up. Lou spends ten minutes just crying from fear and frustration, choking on it, before she manages to calm down enough to wash up and change into the one fresh set of clothes she brought along with her.

She goes down and pays for one more day in the room. She buys something cheap from the convenience store beside the motel and has that for lunch, and for dinner too.

Night falls again, with still no response from Debbie. Lou breathes deep and mentally prepares herself to stretch her money and figure out how to survive in New York on her own for the next week - month - who knows?

 

 

Fifty hours after Lou lands in New York, ink _finally_ blooms on her skin and Lou cries again for the third time in those fifty hours, but this time out of sheer relief. It’s messy scrawl, telling of some panic. _Lou where are you?_

Her vision is still blurry when she grabs her marker to give Debbie the motel address. Her hand shakes - _finally,_ finally. The past few days have been the loneliest she’s ever felt in her life and she never wants to feel that way ever again.

 _I’m coming now, stay there._ It’s written quickly and erased even faster to be replaced with more frantic scribbling. _Lou, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’ll explain everything to you later. Just hold on a little longer, I’m coming._

Lou sobs, trying not to break, and packs everything in her bag to get ready.

 

 

Her eyes are dry and she’s breathing evenly when the knock comes on her door. Lou leaps off the bed and rushes to open it, and when she sees the girl in front of her, it feels like the whole world falls into place. She _knows._

_Finally._

“Lou?” Debbie whispers, eyes tinged red and sporting a prominent bandage on her upper left arm. Her voice is - it’s everything Lou never thought it would sound like but it’s _perfect,_ she’s perfect, this is her soulmate, the one she’s been talking to for years, who has been making her smile and giving her the strength to hold on and the one she’s been waiting for. Lou just pushes forward and wraps her arms around Debbie and hangs on, breathing in. She feels Debbie exhale and return the hug, burying her face in Lou’s shoulder.

They just stand like that for a while, Lou wanting to brand this moment on her brain, wanting to hold it close and never let it go. She’s finally here, with her soulmate, the love of her life, and she never wants to let go, ever again.

 

 

They don’t leave right away. Debbie sits on the motel bed and takes Lou’s hands in hers, pressing her forehead against Lou’s. “I’m so sorry I left you to fend for yourself for two days. I should have told Danny, or my parents, I - I’m such an idiot, Lou, will you forgive me?”

Is that even a question? Lou thinks she would walk the earth for Debbie, bring down the moon for her, and in this - all the terror and panic of the past few days just disappears in favour of reveling in the fact that they’re together, finally, after all this time. She answers by putting her arms around Debbie and pulling her into another long embrace. Debbie strokes her fingers through Lou’s hair, pressing a gentle kiss to her temple. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

That stirs something in Lou, who pulls back and looks on at Debbie’s bandaged arm with concern. “But you’re not,” she says softly. “What happened?”

Debbie swallows, averting her eyes. “The job didn’t go as planned. I - I almost got shot. But I’m okay, I’m okay,” she quickly says, noticing the alarm in Lou’s eyes. “Danny saved my ass, and I made it out in one piece. But they messed my arm up a little. Nothing that won’t heal with time. They - there was a lot of blood loss. Danny had to carry me out of there, I couldn’t - keep my eyes open. I’ve been recovering for the past two days, and I never told anyone that you were coming, and nobody noticed your writing, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Lou, I can’t believe you’ve been alone for two days, if anything had happened to you, I would - “ It peters off into a strangled sob, Debbie’s face still turned away, and _oh._ For the longest time, Debbie has been a beacon of light to Lou, untouchable, brave beyond measure and high on a pedestal. Lou never realised how unreal Debbie seemed until now, so far away, only made written into her world through words on her skin. 

But right now she seems so deeply human, so breakable and raw and imperfect, and it takes Lou’s breath away. This is her soulmate, her forever, her promise of a happy ending. She’s _real,_ capable of injury, capable of making mistakes, and more important than all of that, earnestly and genuinely devoted to Lou. She’s been in love with Debbie from a distance for _so_ long, since she truly came to understand what the concept of _soulmates_ really meant, but she thinks, in this moment, she falls in love all over again, and it settles, certainty in her bones. This is exactly where she’s meant to be.

“It’s okay,” she says, in lieu of everything else threatening to spill past her lips. She cups Debbie’s face and tilts her head so their eyes meet, then leans in to press a soft kiss to the edge of her mouth. “We’re here, we’re both here, and it’s okay.”

Debbie stares back at her for the longest minute of her life, then nods, eyes so soft and warm and full of love that it makes Lou shiver all the way down her spine. “We’re okay,” Debbie repeats, then pulls her back in for the sweetest kiss of her life.

 

 

The rest of that day is a blur, with Debbie sweeping Lou into the backseat of a car with a roguishly handsome young man in the driver’s seat. He turns back to give Lou a warm, sincere smile and greets her by name, and it hits her - _Danny._ She likes him instantly, or maybe _instant_ isn’t the right word for it because she’s been hearing about him for half her life. The point stands.

The first thing Debbie does when they reach the Ocean home is to pretty much drag Lou to the dining table, where an assortment of dishes is laid. “I asked my parents to cook before Danny and I left,” she tells Lou. “I thought - you would probably be hungry.”

Lou opens her mouth to protest - it’s an instinct developed after years in an abusive household - but then the smell of piping hot home-cooked food hits her square in the face and suddenly she’s this close to literally drooling all over her shirt. The mere _scent_ of the spread already tastes better than anything she’s had in _years_ and she realises just how hungry she is, so she keeps quiet and lets Debbie guide her into a chair. There’s a plate in front of her and utensils, and Debbie gestures expansively to the food. “Help yourself and go ahead, okay? I’ll go find Mom and Dad.” 

She whisks away, graceful and quick, leaving Lou reaching for some mashed potatoes to hide the dopey smile beginning to spread on her face. Danny comes in with her meagre belongings and sets her backpack gently down in her line of sight, then sits down opposite her, casually ladling soup into a bowl and striking up conversation. Danny has a charming, charismatic way of putting her at ease, and this is still technically a stranger’s house in a foreign country, but before Debbie returns with her parents, the tension is already relaxing from Lou’s muscles. 

It returns, a bit, when Debbie’s parents sit down at the table and meet her eyes, because all she has ever known to expect from parental figures is abandonment and cruelty, but Debbie’s father smiles wide and kind and her mother speaks gently and respectfully to Lou, and if this is the family she is going to end up in, she thinks it’s a good one.

“We are so happy to finally meet you, Lou,” Debbie’s father says. “We’re so sorry we couldn’t bring you to safety earlier. But all that changes now. I promise.”

And he lives up to that - they all do. When Lou finishes her food she’s directed to a room of her own, adjoining Debbie’s, with an attached bathroom and a closet half-filled with beautiful clothes, exactly her style, and a bed that feels like she’s lying on a cloud. Debbie’s father takes her to the immigration authorities to help her apply for citizenship on soulmate grounds and uses his contacts to speed up the process. Debbie’s mother uses _her_ contacts to get Lou enrolled in Debbie’s high school and takes her out to buy more clothes and decorations for her bedroom. Danny drives both Debbie and Lou to school every day and picks them up after too. They accept her without reserve and treat her like one of their own and before the year is out Lou knows she would die for them if she was given the word. They are more a family to her than anybody else ever has been.

And Debbie - Debbie is wonderful. Debbie is everything Lou dreamed she would be, and she shouldn’t be surprised, she supposes, because this is her _soulmate,_ but still. Debbie watches out for her at school without being overbearing, and makes her laugh in the middle of classes with stupid jokes appearing on her arm, and is the _only_ thing allowed in her blindspot, ever. Six months after she flees Australia Lou finds herself in Debbie’s bed, curled up in her arms and falling asleep to the sound of one of Debbie’s vinyls in her player and it’s perfect. She would live the first sixteen years of her life over a hundred times if she got to have this in return, and she never wants anything to change. 

 

 

Things do change. It’s not that she’s surprised, or even aggrieved about it - it’s just a fact. They do. It _really_ starts the morning she comes down to the breakfast table to find Debbie talking to her father, all serious and professional, about a solo job she’s planning. Somebody who was recently exposed for domestic violence, but has been waving his money everywhere he can to make the charges go away. Debbie intends to take that money away from him and see what he does then.

“I said no,” Lou catches the low, firm tone of Debbie’s father. “It’s too dangerous. This guy isn’t just your average millionaire playboy, he has _actual_ ties to the underworld, and I won’t have you risking your life alone.”

“You know I have to do it alone,” Debbie shoots back. “Danny’s going to be off in Kerala with Mom and Amita doing _their_ job and you’re handling the shitstorm with Rusty’s family and if this goes on any longer he’s going to get away scot-free while his ex-wife and kids get _nothing_ and I’m not letting that happen. I thought you _trusted_ me, I’m not a kid any more, I’m as much an Ocean as you and Mom and Danny and I can _handle_ this - “

“I trust you, Deborah, all right? And you know that too. I’m just saying it’s _too dangerous_ for you to go alone, and I’m sorry, but I won’t risk the life of my baby girl for something as reckless as this - “

 _“Reckless?”_ Debbie says, voice raising, sounding positively outraged, and Lou decides, impulsively, to speak up. “I can go with her.”

They both spin around to face Lou, standing on the last stair, eyes trained on both of them. Debbie blinks twice, caught off-guard, but her father’s brow furrows with something more than surprise. Something like - regard, respect, interest. He looks at Lou searchingly. “Do you think you can help Debbie in her work, and not hinder her?”

“Dad!” Debbie hisses, indignant and ready to leap to Lou’s defense, but he holds up a hand. “It was a serious question. Lou - my wife and I have raised our children to uphold a legacy since the moment they drew their first breaths. That legacy is a criminal one and comes with a great deal of weight. If you choose to step into this world, it means you choose to swear yourself to it. To us. To your soulmate. It is not a decision to make lightly. Do you understand that?”

She understands, but it was also a decision she made _years_ ago, the very first time ink appeared on her skin, the first time she woke up to a smiley face on her hand, the first time she saw the words _love you_ directed at her, all the way from New York.

She’s decided.

 

 

She slips into the life of crime easier than anyone expects her to. She goes out on small, low-risk jobs with Debbie to start out and they take copious advantage of their soul bond, Debbie relaying information and instructions with a quick scrawl on her wrist three rooms away from Lou. For the earlier days, Debbie gets her best friend Tammy to find Lou a custom-made wristband concealing an ink pellet she can trigger if they’re ever separated and she ever gets into trouble she can’t handle on her own. Lou uses it only once in her life after she overestimates a jump and ends up cradling a broken arm behind a dumpster while three cops come after her. Bright red blooms along her arm and Debbie’s, in unison, and moments later Debbie is vaulting over a wall to get her out of there. They make a good team. They grow together.

It’s not always smooth sailing. They’re soulmates, but they’re also still two separate people. Spending the rest of her teenage years in the Ocean household gives her some insight on healthy romantic and familial relationships beyond her own soulmate bond. Debbie’s parents argue sometimes - about criminal-related things, but also personal ones, petty and serious issues both. It sometimes gets a little loud and strained, but never gets violent or abusive, and by the end of the day they’ll _always_ have sat down to talk things through calmly and figure something out. They do disagree, and snap at each other, and it’s not always easy, so Lou doesn’t expect it to be easy with Debbie either. The soul bond just means they’re meant for each other. It doesn’t mean they don’t have to put in the work.

And they do. As they grow up, grow older, they grow into themselves. Lou learns to stand taller and smile wider and shake off old ghosts. Debbie mellows slightly - _very_ slightly - and starts putting far more effort into her plans before going out to execute them. They figure out what works for them and what doesn’t. They fight and then they talk and then they compromise. They work countless jobs together, learning how to fall seamlessly into each other’s orbits and watch each other’s sixes. Lou gets her first bike when she’s twenty-three and takes Debbie out on adventurous, romantic dates (and then plays getaway driver for jobs too). And every morning, Lou still wakes up to a smiley face on her wrist, without fail.

They move out when they’re twenty-four after finding a gorgeous apartment that overlooks the city and has amazing cafes within walking distance. They’re a thirty-minute drive from Debbie’s parents and fifteen to Danny when he’s actually in town and not galivanting around pulling jobs that are getting progressively more ambitious. They sit in the living room sometimes with jazz records playing and throw around creative new ideas for jobs. Debbie’s started taking them more seriously than ever - she already did, has always carried the Ocean mantle with pride, but the older they get the more obvious it becomes to Lou that she’s doing all she can to live up to the legacy.

“I worry about it sometimes,” Debbie confesses quietly to her one night, lying on their bed staring up at the ceiling. “About being the youngest. The baby. Mom and Dad have pulled off some _incredible_ heists that still get talked about twenty years later and Danny’s been doing crazy stunts since he was in high school and sometimes I just look around at what _I’ve_ been doing and it feels like it’ll never be enough. Like I’ll never live up to that.”

“Hey,” Lou says sternly, tracing her thumb against Debbie’s wrist. “None of that. You’re good at what you do - one of the best. And I know you know it.” She cuts Debbie off as Debbie opens her mouth to reply. “I’ve been working with you for almost half my life and talking to you for twice that time. I’ve seen you when we’re conning marks and rigging jobs. You are good. Don’t ever doubt that.”

Debbie smiles at her in the darkness, lips curving up in a soft smile as she pulls Lou in for a quick kiss. “How do you always know what to say, Lou Miller?”

“I’m your soulmate,” Lou replies simply, and kisses her back.

 

 

They don’t talk about it a lot after that, but Lou’s not an idiot, and she knows, as time goes on, that insecurity never leaves Debbie, not really. She gets better at hiding it, but it’s still there, tucked under her tongue like a canker. It shows in the restless frustration she carries whenever jobs don’t go well or things are slow, the exhausted irritation borne from poring over plans for hours on end with empty coffee cups littered all over a messy table. Danny spends a month in Monaco running some complicated poker thing he set up over half a year and Lou stands by watching Debbie try to pretend she isn’t jealous.

When they’re thirty, Debbie’s mother succumbs to cancer, leaving behind a criminal legacy spanning decades, a spotless record, a husband and two children. She writes something short and sincere on her arm hours before she passes. Debbie’s father still carries it clear as day at the funeral, stark black lines on his skin. He is quieter than Lou’s ever known him to be, hunched and eyes hollow, radiating none of the power and strength he always has as the head of the Ocean family.

They cremate Debbie’s mother and when they do, the ink fades off her father’s arm, melting away and leaving no trace it was ever there. He watches it go for an entire minute and never makes a sound, but when he looks back up it’s like the light has gone out of his life entirely.

He dies five months later, quietly, in his own bed. Lou helps Debbie and Danny with the funeral and holds Debbie’s hand when she cries, and it makes her ache, breath catching in her lungs. She can’t imagine losing Debbie, ever, can’t imagine being left behind. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if she ever finds herself in the same position as Debbie’s father, burying her soulmate and knowing she’ll never hear her voice ever again, or make her laugh, or see writing blooming on her skin. Even now that they live together, spend almost every moment of the day together, they still write each other - quick, stupid, random things about nothing. For so much of her childhood, Lou had to hide that writing, and Debbie knows that, so they’ve never stopped inscribing things into each other’s skin. Lou knows they never, ever will.

 

 

They start travelling more after Debbie’s parents die, now that there’s truly nothing really tying them down to one place. They rig poker in Vegas and run scams in Chicago and pick pockets in every foreign country they drop into. Debbie searches endlessly for new experiences and starts drawing up plans for bigger, more complex, more ambitious jobs. She’s meticulous about it, does all her research, and has backup plans for her backup plans, and Lou’s never afraid to follow her into any schemes, but - still.

She has her concerns but they never really get _worrying_ until Danny goes to prison for the first time. He’s had some close shaves, and the sentence is a short one, but when they get the news Lou still sees how it shakes Debbie. It doesn’t make her even more careful, like Lou hoped - if anything, a bit more recklessness starts seeping into her attitude, and Lou doesn’t get why. They’re in their thirties at this point, having worked as a perfect duo for over a decade, soulmates in every sense of the word, and it strikes Lou one chilling evening that for the first time in a very long time, she isn’t completely sure what Debbie is doing or thinking or what she wants. It’s a deeply uncomfortable feeling. 

She asks Debbie about it, and Debbie gets a little evasive first, then defensive. It’s confusing and frustrating and makes Lou push just that little bit harder. They fight about it and it starts taking longer to cool down and apologise to each other and talk about things. They work fine for another day or two, and then something sets them both off again and the cycle just keeps going.

It comes to a head in Singapore when Debbie makes a rookie mistake because she insists on rushing into a part of the job even though something screws up in the previous part and they nearly get caught with a kilo of cocaine in _Singapore._ By some miracle they manage to ditch it and get out of there scot-free, but only just, literal skin of their teeth. When they get back to New York Lou doesn’t speak to Debbie for two days, ignores all and any writing appearing on every inch of her skin. It isn’t until Debbie pulls her into their bedroom and begs her to listen and talks about going somewhere quiet and laying low for a while that she finally breaks that silence.

“You better be serious about laying low,” Lou says, letting the very real anger lace her tone. Debbie nods, taking Lou’s hand in her own and squeezing gently. “I promise.”

 

 

She finds out when they set up shop in quieter suburbs that Debbie’s idea of ‘laying low’ is rigging bingo at an elderly home - low-risk, low-stakes, and Lou can’t even be surprised or mad. Debbie’s an Ocean, after all. Asking her to abstain from crime entirely would frankly be akin to cruel and unusual punishment, and anyway… Lou likes that life, too. It’s not picking pockets and robbing trucks that she objects to - it’s how Debbie seems to be bringing the wrong kind of energy into that, recently. If settling down to rig bingo for a while is how things are going to stabilise so they can go back to normal, she can deal with it.

Three months later she finds out about Claude Becker and her whole world implodes from within.

 

 

See, the first thing she thinks of, despite everything, even after all this time, is - _she’s in love with him, and she’s not in love with me._

Lou is not an idiot. Soulmates are soulmates and society sells the shit out of the idea that your perfect match is the Only One For You and most people roll with that, but she grew up with a father who never saw ink appear on his skin, who married a woman he knew wasn’t his soulmate, and she spent her teen years watching Danny bring an assortment of dates home for dinner even though they never matched the writing on his arms. People can fall in love with people who aren’t their soulmates and even spend their lives with them. It’s not that much of a stretch to believe Debbie fell for Claude even though _Lou’s_ her soulmate.

Even after Debbie explains - and it takes a solid twenty-four hours for her to even calm Lou down enough to sit Lou down and actually do that - the anger and disbelief remains, because she’s still not entirely sure if Debbie means what she says, and even if she does, it still means she went back on her word. It means she went behind Lou’s back to sign up for some art fraud scheme _without Lou,_ after promising they would lay low and not rush into anything risky and ridiculous for a while.

“We have,” Debbie points out after a good two hours of fighting, the frustration beginning to really rear its head. “It’s been three months just rigging bingo and maybe taking a couple dollars out of register tills, Lou, and I’m so fucking sick of that, I just - I just wanted something more, okay? We’re meant for something bigger than this and you _know_ it, and I don’t want to be stuck doing this for the rest of my life. This is easy, safe enough, and I trust Claude. We’ll rake in some good profits and then cut loose and go back to the way it was before, alright? I’m doing this for us.” She takes Lou’s hands in her own and the gesture is so familiar it makes Lou soften against her will. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I wanted to get things more settled before giving you the good news, and I was wrong to hide this. But I _promise_ you’re the only one for me, and I’m only doing this for _us._ I love you, Lou. You’re my soulmate, and you’re all I want.”

She looks so earnest, and it reminds Lou of being sixteen, in a shitty motel room after two days of being on her own, and for everything else they’ve dealt with the past two decades, Lou has never been alone again after those two days, so she sighs and nods. “Alright,” she says softly, and doesn’t miss Debbie’s bright, blinding grin of relief. “But you better not do something stupid and get yourself killed. I won’t be there to save you.” 

“Like I haven’t been doing the saving,” Debbie laughs, and kisses her.

 

 

Lou takes full control of the bingo rig while Debbie goes off and plays her part in Claude’s con. Sometimes she’s away longer than Lou would like, but she takes comfort in the smiley faces on her wrist every morning, still. Debbie writes her long messages whenever she’s away, filling her whole arm with text, and it relieves Lou somewhat. Their bank accounts start seeing an uptick and after five pleasant, peaceful months, she finally starts to relax. Maybe Debbie was right. Maybe this is a sign - they’re going back to the way things were before. Everything is going to work out.

 _What’s on the agenda today?_ Lou writes one evening, cooking up some dinner for herself. She hums while meat sizzles in her pan and glances at the answer appearing slowly on her arm. _Meeting buyers at some fancy restaurant downtown in two hours. Wrapping up this one. Home by tomorrow afternoon._

Lou smiles, getting the food settled before reaching for her marker again. _See you soon, baby. Love you._

A big heart and smiley face are the response, and Lou’s in a good mood when she starts on her stir-fry.

 

 

She doesn’t wake up to a smiley face the next morning - instead, to a call. A call that changes absolutely everything.

Of course it does.

 

 

Not twelve hours after her last message to Debbie, Lou finds herself facing her in a holding room trying not to throw up. She’s been called down because she’s legally registered as Debbie’s soulmate, and given some privacy to talk to Debbie - Debbie, who’s been arrested for fraud and been framed by Claude Dogshit Becker and refused to rat on him and is now getting hit with a full face of charges because he sold her out, of course he did, and they are looking at possible _years_ of imprisonment and Lou thinks her world might be falling apart at the seams.

They don’t speak to each other for the first ten minutes, Debbie looking at her hands and the floor and the walls and everywhere but Lou’s eyes, and Lou struggling with a tidal wave of emotion just _surging_ through her. It’s ten minutes in that Debbie finally swallows and looks up and Lou sees the tears in her eyes. “I - “ Debbie starts, then falters, voice breaking. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Instantly every other feeling is shoved aside in favour of explosive, planetshaking anger. “I shouldn’t be here?” Lou repeats, letting incredulity slip into her tone. “I _shouldn’t be here?_ You’re damn _fucking_ right I shouldn’t be here, Deborah Ocean, and neither should you, and you wouldn’t be if you had just fucking _listened_ to me in the first place, about not pushing your luck and keeping your promises about laying low and - “

“Lou!” Debbie yells, one short, sharp shout, and it’s urgent and desperate and pained enough that Lou stops. “You _can’t_ be here. They can’t link you with this. You can’t get dragged into this.” She’s trembling now, shoulders shaking, but her voice stays steady. “I chose this, and I will deal with the consequences. But you can’t. I won’t let you. You need to get out of here and play up your innocence and feign complete ignorance of this.”

“Like hell I will,” Lou starts. Debbie doesn’t let her continue, slamming her hand on the table hard enough to make it shudder. “Don’t fucking - Lou. This isn’t a joke. I’m going to jail. You’re not coming down with me. Get the fuck out and play the grieving partner who has no idea how the hell her soulmate could _ever_ do this to her.”

Play the grieving partner? _Play?_ Lou wants to say something cutting about how she sure as hell isn’t _playing_ because that is exactly how she feels right now, but then as she’s about to open her mouth to speak she meets Debbie’s eyes and Debbie closes hers, exhaling a soft, awful sob. The words die in her throat. “Debbie.”

“Please,” Debbie whispers, eyes still closed. “I’m sorry. I screwed up, and now I - Lou. I’m sorry.” 

All the anger just dissipates, and Lou sags back in her chair, putting her face in her hands, because how did they come to this? If she closes her eyes she can still picture herself in the Ocean’s dining room, sixteen years old and salivating over the spread of food on the table, made specially for her, with Debbie’s hand in hers and Danny bringing her bag in, and now they’re sitting in a cold room and Debbie’s parents are long dead and Danny’s god-knows-where with his team and Lou doesn’t know what happened, how everything fell apart like this.

 

 

Danny turns out to have been spending six months in Macau handling something incredibly high-risk and only makes it back to New York in time to watch his little sister get sentenced to seven years in prison on trumped-up charges while the mastermind of the whole con job walks free.

“I’m going to kill him,” Danny says, in this eerily calm voice Lou’s never heard in her life, the last time they ever get to talk to Debbie before she walks into jail as a convicted felon. “I’m going to figure out where he’s running off to and I’m going to - “

“No,” Debbie cuts him off, all steel. “Claude is mine to deal with when I get out of here.” She fixes Danny with a stare he doesn’t argue with. “Just - keep out of trouble. Watch out for the others for me. Okay?”

Danny nods, fists still clenched, and Debbie’s gaze slides over to Lou, her expression impossibly soft and heartbroken. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “Lou, if you don’t want to wait for me - “

“Don’t you _dare,_ ” Lou snaps, eyes filling with tears she blinks viciously away. “You’re my _soulmate,_ we’ve spent _years_ together, don’t even - I will be right here when you get out. Don’t even _fucking_ think otherwise.”

Debbie doesn’t say anything in response, but hours later, when Lou’s lying face-up on the couch in their empty apartment that feels too big and too empty (and will feel that way for another few years), she glances over to her left arm and sees ink blossom on the skin, small and messy.

_I love you._

Three simple words, that’s it. Lou stares and stares at them until they slowly melt away, then curls in on herself on the couch and lets herself cry.

 

 

Anything capable of imprinting text on human skin is prohibited in prison. Inmates are never allowed access to pens or markers or paint, only pencils and crayons and the like. They are deemed possible security breaches, so the day Debbie goes to jail, Lou wakes up in the morning to no smiley face on her hand for the first time in _decades._ She has to close her eyes and take deliberately long, shaky breaths for a good fifteen minutes before she can even stumble out of bed and have breakfast.

The first week Debbie spends in prison, Lou similarly spends lying on her bed, sleeping whenever she can and drinking when she can’t. She must eat something at _some_ point, because when Danny bangs on the front door at 9AM a week later she can still manage to drag herself off the couch to let him in. His brow is knitted with worry as he locks the door behind him and a quiet hiss passes his lips when he takes in the sight of the living room, empty vodka bottles scattered haphazardly around the furniture. “Jesus, Lou. You can’t - all right, you’re going to go take a shower and show me your liquor stash so I can throw all of it out.” 

She just glares at him, fingers tightening around the neck of the half-full bottle she’s still holding on to. “Fucking get out of my house, Daniel Ocean."

She doesn’t really expect him to move, and he doesn’t surpass that expectation. Danny folds his arms and stares her down with this uncomfortably piercing gaze. “You’re really going to spend the next seven years drinking your life away instead of _living?_ Because I have to say, I thought you were a lot better than that.”

Even through the haze of alcohol Lou can glimpse traces of ink on the back of Danny’s hand in Tess’ neat handwriting, and a wave of pure fury rises in her chest. “Considering my soulmate is going to spend the next seven years in prison - “

“Considering my _baby sister_ is going to spend the next seven years in prison with no contact with the outside world,” Danny speaks over her, louder than she can. “Don’t give me that shit, Lou. You know she wouldn’t have wanted you to do this. She would have wanted you to keep your head up and keep going and move on. We both know she’s an idiot about a lot of things, but not this. You want to wait for her? Sure. But waiting doesn’t mean putting your whole life on pause. It means you keep running all the solo cons you were pulling before this, or following up on whatever side jobs you were doing together, or planning a huge fucking heist to commemorate her return when her sentence ends. Your existence doesn’t start and end with Debbie just because she’s your soulmate. You are so much more than that.”

And that’s the thing, that’s what Danny will _never_ understand, that for _years_ now, that has been her status quo. Her life has begun and end with Debbie because she was a lost child in a loveless home clinging to her destined one and her words on Lou’s skin. When she ran away, she ran to Debbie and nothing else. Lou has been orbiting around Debbie for almost her entire life. Debbie hasn’t just made her feel loved all her life - Debbie has made her feel chosen, and useful, and like she has a _purpose._ Like the world would lose something without her being around. And she has lived like this for _so_ long, now that Debbie’s been torn away from her, she doesn’t know what to do.

But here’s the thing, too - Danny may not ever understand, but like Debbie he has also known Lou for half her life. She grew up in his house under his wing and she will always be a little sister to him the way Debbie is. He knows her so much better than Lou will ever realise, which is why he says - “Lou, get up. You really want to be like your dad?”

There is _nothing_ in the world to adequately describe what Lou feels when she hears that. The next moment she is lunging across the room to grab unsteadily at Danny’s shirt with one hand, the other one flailing in some semblance of a sucker punch right to his cheek. “Fuck you,” she screams, voice hoarse from a week of drinking and crying and chain-smoking in her (cold, empty) bedroom. “Fuck you, I’m not like him, I’ll _never_ be like him, I - “

“I know,” Danny says softly, catching her wrists easily and holding on tight, his eyes impossibly sympathetic. “So please. Lou, please.” 

 _Lou, please,_ she hears in someone else’s voice, shadowy echoes from years past, and she sags against him, all the fight gone out of her, sobbing shakily. Danny sighs, wrapping his arms around her and hanging on. “It’s going to be okay, Lou,” he promises, and Lou thinks maybe - just maybe - she can start by believing him.

 

 

Danny helps her straighten up the apartment with some help from Amita and Tammy. She tells him she wants to run a legitimate club - he snorts when she goes into detail about the watered-down vodka she’s going to serve but it’s a good sound, so she grins back - and they look through some possible sites together. When they settle on a place and Lou puts her name on the lease, he calls Rusty and Yen and all the other boys to help her set things up. He checks in on her at least once a week and wears long-sleeved shirts and jeans whenever he drops by - Lou doesn’t think he knows she knows, but she appreciates the gesture (she might be slowly dealing with the reality of Debbie in prison, but that doesn’t mean seeing other people’s soul marks doesn’t make her want to scream).

Slowly, gradually, she settles. She figures out how to run her club through trial and (thankfully little) error. She falls into her own comfortable routine where she learns to answer to nobody but herself. She figures out who she is standing on her own, her skin completely free of ink. Waking up and looking at her blank hand devoid of smiley faces without feeling like throwing up takes longer, but eventually one day she glances past it and just keeps going and it feels like a victory.

Her club starts seeing a greater uptick in numbers. She hires new girls to help her with the not-so-legal bit of the business. She tries to smoke and drink less and mostly succeeds, spending her time on other, better things like her bike and travelling. It’s not too bad a life.

Sometimes, things still get - bad. Sometimes she wakes up and feels hollow and cold, like there’s a piece of her that’s irretrievably missing, Debbie’s absence a palpable weight pressing down on her chest. On those days she sometimes reaches for a marker and writes messily and desperately on her skin, messages to Debbie about how much she misses her and how the world seems less bright without her by Lou’s side and how it shouldn’t have been like this. She never gets a reply and it’s not that she expects one, but some days all she can do is just sit on the bedroom floor with the marker lying uncapped beside her and her own writing bleeding into her skin.

On those days, Danny drops by, whenever he can. He’ll bring Lou hot tea and rub her back and talk quietly and calmly about everything and nothing while she chokes out her sobs. He’s patient and gentle and every bit the caring, devoted older brother Lou sometimes wishes she could have had earlier. It gets easier as the years go by, and most of that is her, but she won’t lie - Danny keeps her going. Without Danny, she’s not sure she would have held on as long as she has. He is the only one in the world who could even come close to understanding exactly how she feels, because Debbie is his little sister and anyone who thinks he doesn’t love Debbie as much as Lou loves her is a fucking idiot.

Five years, three months and two days after Debbie goes to prison, he and Tess set off on a drive to Vegas. There’s a drunk driver on the roads and he plows through a four-lane highway before smashing into solid concrete and dying instantly. He takes seven lives with him. Danny and Tess are two of them.

The first thing Lou thinks when Rusty calls her, with the world already beginning to blur out in front of her, is: _well, at least they died together._

If she’s being honest, the few days after that are a blank space in her memory. She thinks Tammy picked her up and drove her to the funeral, and they were all together, the whole Ocean team, and of all the fucking cliches it rained at the cemetery, but none of it registers, all grey fog where she’s clutching and drowning and screaming because he’s _gone,_ Danny is dead, and she’s never going to see him again. Danny was her brother, for all intents and purposes. The only real parents she’ll ever acknowledge were the Oceans and they’ve been dead for years, and Lou stood at their funerals too, and her soulmate has another three years to go before she gets out of jail, and her brother is dead, and Lou remembers two long and lonely days from her sixteenth year of existence and several warm, glorious, perfect days in the years after that and truly believing she would never have to feel that lost ever again.

Three days after they bury Danny finds Lou sitting on the couch nursing a bottle of vodka because this time Danny isn’t there to tell her to get her shit straight, and with trembling fingers she grabs for a marker and blindly scrawls on her arm. _Danny’s dead._

No reply, as usual, and Lou’s vision blurs as she keeps going, pressing the marker tip harder against her arm, trying to quell the gasping cries building in her chest. _Danny and Tess are dead and you’re in prison and I’m alone and I think I’m always going to be._

(She doesn’t know then, and she won’t know until years after that moment, years after seven people successfully rob the Met Gala, when she’s living comfortably in a warehouse that’s a bitch to heat with seven other women and she’s _happy,_ but Debbie sits in solitary and watches that ink spill across her arm right below the sleeve of her prison-designated uniform. Debbie curls in on herself and cries for ten minutes, shaking with it, before she wipes her tears and takes a breath and straightens up, then starts planning how to get parole.)

 

 

Losing Danny is nothing like losing Debbie, because a) he was her brother and not her soulmate and b) Debbie is, at the very least, alive. It means she doesn’t sink into an alcoholic stupor and end up in hospital for liver poisoning the way she was at risk of when Debbie went to jail, but it does mean the world loses its colour for a long fucking time.

She spends a lot of time at Amita’s and Tammy’s and Rusty’s, because she knows the kind of state she’s capable of sinking into if she’s alone. She talks to them about the club and about her bike and they argue crime-related things and only ever bring up Danny the rare times they’re dead drunk. It’s not everything, but it helps.

It’s at Rusty’s the day it happens. Yen is telling a hilarious convoluted story about a job gone wrong from his younger days and they’re all laughing and out of nowhere, Linus goes completely still. Lou frowns at him and is about to ask what’s wrong when he lifts a shaking hand and points at Lou’s arm. Everyone turns to look, and suddenly the mood shifts, because appearing rapidly on her skin are _words,_ actual words, like she hasn’t seen in _years, years, years_ -

“What the fuck,” Lou says, her heart dropping, the text reading so simple, _I got parole,_ and then, _soon._

“Oh my fucking god,” Basher says, as they all lean in to read. “Did she - is that - “ And suddenly they’re all talking at the tops of their voices, overlapping, chaotic, but Lou’s entire world narrows down to those four words and more than anything, _soon._

_Soon._

After five fucking years, after all this time, after - _soon._

Debbie’s coming home.

 

 

Lou gets a text, not writing on her arm, when Debbie asks her to meet her at the cemetery. She’s not sure why until she really _thinks_ about having had that message appear on her skin and how she would have reacted and realises than even after half a decade, Debbie still knows her so damn well. Why is she even surprised?

She drives to the cemetery and the appointed time and sits in the car digging her nails into her thighs for a solid fifteen minutes, trying to breathe. Five years apart, not seeing Debbie’s face, not hearing her voice, not having her words on Lou’s skin. She’s been healing, she’s been growing, she’s been moving on with her life, and she doesn’t know how Debbie might have changed those five years in prison, and she’s not going to lie, she’s terrified, she’s actually _shaking_ when the passenger door clicks open and Debbie slides into the seat -

“Lou,” she says - her name, the first word out of her mouth after _five fucking years apart,_ and then Lou is reaching across the space between them to pull Debbie in and kiss her. She pushes five long years of longing and desperation into the kiss, wrapping her arms around Debbie and just falling back into an embrace that still feels so terribly familiar. 

It is the - best, worst, sweetest, cruelest, most painful, most wonderful -

It is the longest moment of her life.

Not much is accomplished the rest of that day.

 

 

She wakes up the morning after in her - _their_ \- apartment, their bed, the sun streaming through the window, Debbie in her arms, and it’s so much like a disgustingly sappy romantic comedy, and Lou thinks she might cry from it. She watches, transfixed, as Debbie stirs slowly, opening her eyes and looking sleepily up at Lou and smiling and Lou has been healing, growing, moving on, but now she looks at her soulmate and thinks a whole fucking lifetime of that would never have helped her be okay with a world without Debbie by her side.

“Hi,” Debbie says, tentative, quiet, but sincere and genuine and full of undisguised, unchanged love, and Lou’s life finally starts falling back into place.

 

 

They get two blissful days just ignoring the rest of the fucking world in their apartment before Debbie takes her out to Veselka and - really, what did Lou expect - lays out a plan to rob the Met Gala. It’s the most absurd, ridiculous, impossible idea Lou’s ever heard in her life and she tells Debbie so. Debbie counters this with a quick sketch of how five years in prison somehow gave her the time to plan what could be the greatest jewel heist in modern history. She’s so earnest about it in a way that reminds Lou of a lot of things, both good and bad.

This kind of thing is why Debbie is her soulmate. This kind of thing is why Lou fell in love and _stayed_ in love and why she rigged bingo and picked pockets and is still watering down vodka in the back room of her club. It has given her some of the greatest happiness in her life and it also took her soulmate away from her for five long years. Which is why she needs to _know_ \- “Why do you need to do this?” Lou asks, and _wants_ to hear the answer.

(And in another life, Debbie tosses her a playful grin and replies with just a witty one-liner: _because it’s what I’m good at,_ and then they move into an honest-to-god warehouse and chase down a fashion designer named Rose Weil and Debbie entices Amita and Tammy into joining up and Lou hunts down Constance and Nine Ball and then they all go and steal the Toussaint off Daphne Kluger’s neck and then John Frazier gets in on the case and Claude Becker goes to jail and they ride off into the sunset, they all get their happily ever after, and not so much changes in this life, not really, but this does - )

“I don’t,” Debbie admits, quiet and honest and raw in a way Lou doesn’t remember having seen for _years_. “And if all you want is for us to take off to a secluded island and live in the lap of luxury for the rest of our lives, then we’ll go, because I owe you that much, and Lou, I never want you to be hurt because of me ever again.” She reaches across the table to take Lou’s hands in hers. “But this was the life we lived and loved for years, until I fucked up because I put my ego above the most important thing in my life. Just give me one chance to prove that I can still give you that again. Give me one chance to prove I can really be the soulmate you fell in love with. Please.”

And Lou listens, and thinks, and holds on to a breath, and looks back. She genuinely has no idea if this plan is going to work. They’ve been apart for five years and soulmates or not Lou thinks they still need time to fall back into what they knew because five years is a long fucking time. And things have already gone wrong once, and Debbie screwed up, and she _knows_ she did, and Lou could ask for the out right now and Debbie would give it to her and they could be content for the rest of their lives - 

But also decades ago there was a four-year-old standing in a cramped apartment in Melbourne listening to her father tell her not to write back to her soulmate and picking up a marker anyway and and there was a nine-year-old begging her soulmate not to draw on her arms any more and there was a sixteen-year-old making that choice, drawing that line, and getting on a plane and flying to New York holding hope in her hands -

A girl standing on the stairs of a house being asked to make a decision and making it, without doubt, without hesitation, without fear -

And there’s a woman here, now, who makes hers, too -

Lou looks up and meets Debbie’s eyes, and smiles, and reaches for a pen. Carefully, she writes on her arm - _where do we start?_

Debbie laughs, plucking the pen from Lou's hand and responding with a smiley face on the back of her hand, and Lou’s life finally, finally knits itself back together again.


End file.
